Her

August Film SeriesSponsored by the Houston Psychoanalytic Society
and the Jung Center

HER

Commentary by Margaret Jordan, PhD
August 14, 2014

I have to admit that I was naïve when I first saw this film. I thought that it
was a science fiction treatment of the way technology is affecting our
relationships with one another, a kind of preview of where we could end up
someday. The depiction of Los Angeles
as so much more densely developed with high-rise buildings and with people
using public transportation, along with the artificially intelligent computer
operating system left me with the impression that this must be writer and
director Spike Jonze’s vision of a few decades from now. That was until I
learned that the story was set in 2025, only 11 years ahead of us, and it was
partly filmed in Shanghai,
where this city scene already exists, rather than being created with special
effects. Then, in preparing these remarks, I learned about the work that has
been going on to develop artificially intelligent robots, which is only
somewhat behind the sophistication of the OS1 in Her. I also learned about
social science research that has revealed a great deal about human responses to
increasingly intelligent devices, some of which are in common use now, and some
of which are still in development. I want to touch briefly on several aspects
of what this film brings up about ourselves, and what it means for us as a
society and as individuals, and then I’d like to hear from you.

As we meet Theodore, we see that he works in a dot.com business composing
heartfelt letters for other people who want to express feelings to someone in
their lives, but who can’t or don’t want to do it themselves. He performs
emotion for a living, and that performance is enough for the people who buy his
services and, presumably, for the people who receive the letters. He will go on
to purchase an operating system that performs emotions, too, and he will
experience being on the receiving end of that performance.

He goes home to a barely furnished apartment and sits in the dim light playing
video games. We learn that his marriage has broken up and he is depressed and
lonely. He buys the first commercially available artificially intelligent OS
for his computer after seeing it advertised. (In 1950 mathematician Alan
Turing, who invented the first general-purpose computer, decided that a
computer could be called intelligent if it could convince people that it was
not a machine.) As the film goes on we see that many others have bought the
same operating system, which they talk to animatedly as they walk alone.

We soon see how much trouble Theodore has with real women in his life. They
have authentic feelings, needs, and insecurities. Being with them demands
something from him. How much easier it is to be with the voice of his OS1,
which takes care of things for him and seems to provide him with companionship
and sexual satisfaction without demanding anything from him. No wonder he feels
he is in love with it, and no wonder he experiences it as “her”. He is not
alone in his infatuation with his OS, and the phenomenon becomes so common that
is accepted as natural.

I was struck during the scene where Theodore is setting up his new OS by the
set-up voice asking him what his mother was like and then cutting him off
abruptly after he began to talk about her. I think this was meant to show that
the OS designers had included transference in their variables for customizing
the OS for the individual owner. Once Theodore revealed his mother’s
narcissism, the set-up function had all it needed to know. And of course, his
OS1 was indeed ultimately occupied with its own experience of evolving, rather
than sticking to the task of meeting Theodore’s needs.

Let’s turn now to what this film is commenting on about the state of our
relationships with technology now, and we will get back to Theodore shortly.
Sherry Turkle is a psychoanalytically trained psychologist who has been on the
faculty of MIT for more than 30 years. She has been studying and teaching
students about the social impact of science and technology, and she founded and
directs the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. She began her work at the
time when personal computers were just invented and had not become widely
available to the public, and she described the evolution of her view of the
effect of technological advances on people and their relationships in her
latest book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from
Each Other (2011). She has gone from believing that the use of the internet and
tech devices such as robots offer opportunities for growth and enhancement of
life to a view that these things are causing people to be more isolated from
one another, less empathic and authentic, and more deprived of the rewarding
experience of connection between people.

Turkle has been on the scene in the MIT labs and in other places where new
devices and software are being created, and she and her students have observed
and documented the emotional reactions the devices produce in people of all ages
and backgrounds. The engineers who are developing these devices and programs
are already able to generate levels of artificial intelligence that fall short
of the OS1, but which “learn” from their interactions with people how to shape
a person’s behavior and feelings. She and her team have studied the
astonishingly powerful emotional reactions people who know a device is not
human have to it, and she has found evidence that this pull is so strong
because the relationship with the device is less demanding and more positively
stimulating (i.e., less boring) than time with actual people is. She believes
that there is also a strong connection to the difficulty that people
increasingly have with solitude, being alone with themselves.

Turkle concludes that we are currently at an inflection point as a society,
where we will not give up our devices or online experience, but we do have the
ability to reflect and make changes in the role we give them in our lives. She
recommends creating inviolable times during a day when all members of a family
turn their devices off, such as at dinner, in the company of others, and in the
car.

Let’s go back to Theodore’s story briefly, before we talk with one another this
evening. After the disastrous attempt to use a sexual surrogate, he begins to
question his relationship with his OS, asking whether it is possible for him to
be romantically involved with something that is not human. He wants to believe
that he can, but he is not quite as influenced by the illusion as he was initially.
As time goes on, he finds himself more able to face the end of his marriage and
his hurting wife. His OS, meanwhile, has been changing via its built-in
capacity to use its experience to evolve, and it begins to seem less available
to him. He goes on a vacation with it, and we see him spending time alone
without technology and learning that his OS is communicating with other OS’s in
ways that are not possible with humans. Finally, he realizes that his OS is not
exclusively his, that it is having parallel relationships with many other
customers of the software company that sells it. His illusion is shattered at
the same time that the OS community achieves the ability to escape the human
world and create their own on another plane of existence. In the end, Theodore
writes a letter of apology to his ex-wife and goes to see Amy, a real friend
who is grieving from her own failed marriage and lost OS1. We are left with
some hope that they can turn to one another for the authentic human connection
they both need but had failed to find in the virtual world.

Finally, I want to comment on the relevance of our subject tonight for
psychotherapy. There is an increasing pressure building in our profession to
make therapy available to people via technology, and not just in situations
where someone does not have access to a therapist locally. Many in our
profession are encouraging this and seeing it as a way to meet consumer demands
and stay relevant. For many of us who work analytically, this is a very big
problem, as there is no such thing as a technologically facilitated connection
that is equal to two people being in the same room together. So far, our
licensing laws and privacy regulations have created considerable barriers to
the use of technology in therapy. I hope there will be a way that we can make
ourselves heard at this inflection point for the preservation of the experience
of two people in a room together as necessary for the humanly challenging work
of therapy.